Fall doesn’t just mean changing leaves and pumpkin spice in just about everything. It’s also the end of the legislative session in California and time to find out whether bills that are important to physicians have passed and been signed by the governor.
CMA had four bills that it considered a priority this year. All four passed, but one was vetoed by Gov. Newsom. Here is a summary of those bills and how the new laws they create will affect you.
SB 470 (Valencia) encourages more physicians to take foreign language courses, as part of their continuing medical education, to better communicate with California’s diverse population. Taking foreign language courses will not be a CME requirement nor will it change any current requirements, but it will be a CME option for physicians.
CME courses will also be updated to address issues such as how implicit bias affects perceptions and treatment decisions, and also how strategies that were developed to address those unintended biases in decision making may contribute to health care disparities by shaping behavior and producing differences in medical treatment. Those differences may be along the lines of race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, socioeconomic status or other characteristics. The bill was sponsored by CMA, signed by the governor and will take effect January 1, 2024.
AB 571 (Petrie-Norris) is designed to ensure that abortion providers are not discriminated against through higher rates for policies from medical malpractice insurers. The bill prohibits an insurer from increasing a provider’s premiums or refusing to issue a policy because that provider offers or performs abortions.
This bill is especially important in today’s landscape as more states restrict reproductive health services and citizens of those states may come to California for care. Provisions of the bill ensure that physicians and other providers can obtain malpractice insurance regardless of liability created by another state’s laws. CMA was a co-sponsor of AB 571, which has been signed by the governor.
Another abortion-related bill, SB 487 (Adkins), strengthens the protections for California’s abortion providers who are providing reproductive health care services to out-of-state patients. Before this bill, a provider’s Medi-Cal status would be automatically suspended if license actions were reported to the Medical Board. AB 487 gives the Department of Health Care Services discretion on whether to suspend a physician’s Medi-Cal status if the claim has to do with a provider performing an abortion or related services, and it would ensure providers are able to contract with California health plans if they have provided abortion services to a patient that resides in a state with restricted abortion laws. CMA says the goal of SB 487, which passed the Legislature and was signed by the governor, is to protect abortion providers’ abilities to practice medicine in California without fear of civil or criminal retaliation from anti-abortion states.
The one bill that was passed but vetoed was SB 582 (Becker), which would have authorized the Data Exchange Framework to create policies and procedures for including electronic health records in the Framework’s structure. In his veto message, Gov. Newsom said that because there are ongoing efforts at the California Department of Health Services and the Center for Data Insights and Innovation to build the framework, the bill was “premature” and that “The state should prioritize implementation of this important work before we consider modifications.”
CMA was successful in its opposition to AB 616 (Rodriguez), which would have allowed financial information belonging to physician groups and other health care groups to be disclosed to anyone who asks for it. The bill raised significant privacy and antitrust concerns, could result in unfair competitive practices, and could have been used to drive down compensation for health care providers. “While I support transparency, this policy is premature,” the governor said in his veto message. “Given the [Office of Health Care Affordability] is in its initial stages of implementation, any additional requirements and associated impacts should be evaluated following full implementation of existing law.”
While we obviously would have liked to have seen all of CMA’s priority bills signed, it was a solidly successful legislative year. I want to thank all our members who contacted their legislators to advocate for issues that are important to the physician community, and we’ll be ready to go again when the Legislature returns in January. In the meantime, on behalf of all of us at SSVMS I want to wish you a warm and happy holiday season and a wonderful new year!
Aileen Wetzel - awetzel@ssvms.org
